Hello everyone! Great victory yesterday, i watched the hole game.
I was reading about all theese trade rumors and I found a post involving Pistons and Wizards.
It was saying for a trade: Charlie V., Bynum and Monroe for Trevor Ariza, Potter and Al Harrington!
Does anybody know something or is just rumors?

Well wasn't a particular pretty game, but it chalks up another W and gets us one game closer to that magical .500

Some quick observations:
I like Josh on the block, but teams will start to double like the Celts tonight and he's gotta work out to move it quickly out to get an open look elsewhere - but it would help if we had a knockdown 3 shooter on the team
Knockdown 3 shooter in mind, Singler is not helping this. I know he has got better, but that is because pretty much the only 3s he is taking is the short side one. Tonight he took some from the longer range, wide open = misses.
Iso on Jennings wasn't working late, not sure why Cheeks went to it a couple of times. For the most part BJ was good tonight though.

I actually got to watch most of the game last night, and there were a few things I liked and didn't like.

First off, the Pistons started pretty terribly. The starting unit got down by 9 in the first half of the first. Coach brought in Chauncey for Pope, and they shaved a point off that deficit. Then he brought in Singler for Drummond, and over the next two minutes they shaved another 2 points off that deficit.

Then he brought in Harrelson for Monroe and Bynum for Jennings, leaving a lineup of Bynum/Billups/Singler/Smith/Harrelson vs. Bradley/Crawford/Wallace/Humphries/Sullinger. Boston ends the quarter on a 16-3 run, and who gets blamed by our fearless write-up masters? Singler, of course, even though it was the PG Bradley (8) and SG Crawford (4) that scored the majority of those points (Wallace - Singler's man - only had two of those points, and that was on an offensive rebound/putback). Singler had a turnover and missed a shot, but he's not the one responsible for directing an offense that managed to get no shot at the basket closer than 20 feet.

In the second quarter the Pistons started chipping away at the lead, starting with some small ball (Jennings/Billups/Singler/Pope/Drummond) and finishing with a 20-11 run to cut the lead to 11 by halftime.

The second half was pretty much all Pistons, and that was awesome to see. They were down by 21 early in the second, yet went on to take a 7 point lead with three minutes left in the fourth before almost choking it away. Now, I could get all up-in-arms about how the Pistons almost lost to another bad team, but the fact remains that they beat that team after being down by 20. Regardless, they won a game that bad teams don't win, and Boston lost a game that good teams don't lose. That's a great feeling as a fan. I could get upset about Jennings only going 9-21 on the night, but the fact remains that he hit 5-8 from the arc and ended up with 23 points off of those 21 FG attempts (plus 5-6 FTs), and he had 14 assists, with some nifty ones like the dish to an open Singler under the basket. There are lots of little things that show me that this team isn't perfect, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea that Cheeks may, in fact, know what he's doing, and that the team is managing to get things done in spite of those imperfections.

I choose, instead, to notice that KCP held Crawford to 1-6 shooting in 20 minutes of guarding him. Drummond was a very efficient 7-11 shooting (no missed FTs!) with 16 rebounds (8 offensive!). Monroe's defense and free throw shooting weren't great, but he wasn't terrible offensively, either. And the team did miss Stuckey, especially *gulp* his defense.

This is a terrible conference, but the Pistons appear to be gelling - in spite of their flaws - and their matchup with Boston last night would be a round 1 preview in the playoffs. The fact that they have beaten both of the best teams in the East so far this season is a good sign, as is the fact that their defense appears to be improving (their opp. 3p% is down to a reasonable level). They mitigate their poor shooting by being the best offensive rebounding team in the league, which kind of makes Andre Drummond into one of the most important players in the NBA (he has 140 offensive rebounds, while the next highest is DeAndre Jordan with 110). They're definitely not elite yet, but give them a little more time to gel, give Jennings a little more time to feel out being a good distributor (he's currently 7th in the league in APG), give KCP more time to find his shot (he's getting there), and let them get healthy, and this is a team that could make some noise in the playoffs.

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A lot of good stuff in this writeup. But I will correct two things. One, we did not start clawing back in that 2nd quarter until Singler left the game. Second, Singler does not need to get scored upon directly by "his man" to be the problem with our defense. Breakdown the film, see how Boston attacked us with Singler in. You will note, they attacked at Singler, and quickly exploited us as soon as we double teamed to help Singler. In not one instance did we let Singler try to defend on his own. Some may think this is a bad choice, and that people should stay home. People who have that opinion have not noticed the simple fact that Singler is incapable of guarding any of the players he got the double team help for. Wallace, for instance, is way too much of a basketball player for Singler to ever dream of guarding.

Of those 10 times, was Singler in the game for each of them? I know you often blame Will Bynum for screwing the team up, even when he is on the bench.

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You know, you are right. For making the other team get the feeling that they have no competition out there, building all that confidence, I should blame Singler for several more baskets, thanks for the suggestion and consider it done.

A lot of good stuff in this writeup. But I will correct two things. One, we did not start clawing back in that 2nd quarter until Singler left the game. Second, Singler does not need to get scored upon directly by "his man" to be the problem with our defense. Breakdown the film, see how Boston attacked us with Singler in. You will note, they attacked at Singler, and quickly exploited us as soon as we double teamed to help Singler. In not one instance did we let Singler try to defend on his own. Some may think this is a bad choice, and that people should stay home. People who have that opinion have not noticed the simple fact that Singler is incapable of guarding any of the players he got the double team help for. Wallace, for instance, is way too much of a basketball player for Singler to ever dream of guarding.

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You do have a point - while Wallace didn't score, he did have several assists and a couple rebounds. Without having the film in front of me, I don't have the ability to adequately rebut your assertions that Singler sucked down help defense, but I will point out that other than during that 2-minute span where Boston ran up Detroit, Boston shot 16/38 (42%). So the assertion that Singler needing help defense killed Detroit feels, to me, like baised assessment based on a small sample size; in reality, Boston shot 22/45 (48.9%) for 48 points when he was in the game, and 18/35 (51.4%) for 38 points when he wasn't. Now, you might look at that and think that Boston had a lot more open looks because of Singler, but you might recognize 20 points missing from that total.

That 20-point difference is because of free throws. Boston was 5/6 during the 26 minutes Singler played, and 15/16 in the 24 minutes he didn't. Boston didn't have any and-1's, so you can effectively add three fouled shots to Singler's units' totals and 8 fouled shots to his non-units' totals. If you do, that puts the shot ratio at 48 to 46, which is a pretty consistent with a 25.5 : 23.5 minutes played:not played ratio.

So the end result is that the Pistons gave up fewer points per minute while he was in there (and that's including the 16 point, 2.5 minute barrage at the end of the first when that awful lineup was in the game) than they did when he wasn't, because Boston shot a lower FG% and fewer FTs. To me it looks like that "covering his bad defense" stuff is just confirmation bias hogwash.

Hard to say that Singler is at fault for any of those, though you could make the case that he should have gotten back on defense, although doing so after a corner three and a long rebound to box out a guy as athletic as Gerald Wallace is not an easy play for most SFs. Now, of course, he didn't get any actual rebounds, but it's not like his inability to box out led to extra possessions or anything.

I don't have an account. Except for video, you can get access to this type of stuff for free on their site.

They shoot terribly against him. 0.83 points per possession. Spot up jump shots are the most common attempt against him by far, and they convert at 28.1% (16 for 57) on the season. He has fouled them 1.6% of the time. They shoot 27.5% against him from three point land overall (14 for 51).

You do have a point - while Wallace didn't score, he did have several assists and a couple rebounds. Without having the film in front of me, I don't have the ability to adequately rebut your assertions that Singler sucked down help defense, but I will point out that other than during that 2-minute span where Boston ran up Detroit, Boston shot 16/38 (42%). So the assertion that Singler needing help defense killed Detroit feels, to me, like baised assessment based on a small sample size; in reality, Boston shot 22/45 (48.9%) for 48 points when he was in the game, and 18/35 (51.4%) for 38 points when he wasn't. Now, you might look at that and think that Boston had a lot more open looks because of Singler, but you might recognize 20 points missing from that total.

That 20-point difference is because of free throws. Boston was 5/6 during the 26 minutes Singler played, and 15/16 in the 24 minutes he didn't. Boston didn't have any and-1's, so you can effectively add three fouled shots to Singler's units' totals and 8 fouled shots to his non-units' totals. If you do, that puts the shot ratio at 48 to 46, which is a pretty consistent with a 25.5 : 23.5 minutes played:not played ratio.

So the end result is that the Pistons gave up fewer points per minute while he was in there (and that's including the 16 point, 2.5 minute barrage at the end of the first when that awful lineup was in the game) than they did when he wasn't, because Boston shot a lower FG% and fewer FTs. To me it looks like that "covering his bad defense" stuff is just confirmation bias hogwash.

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If you don't have the game taped, why? You can analyze all you want, by the data, but I have the game recorded, and know exactly which plays I am talking about. Do me a favor, find a way to record the game, then we can talk about individual plays.

For now, know this, the reason we fell behind by 21 points after Singler entered the game, was Singler. (from 8 down when he entered the game.) Also, do not forget to mention the most important stat, Singler was minus 6 in his minutes - the team was otherwise plus 7 with him out of the game. Just one game though, keep paying attention, great, but record the game if you really care to see what is going on. There are very few people who can see, on one viewing, everything that is going on in a game.

You're constantly pointing out negative +/- games when he happens to have them, but ignore the bigger sample size +/- data. In this measure, he's been better than Stuckey, Drummond, Mitchell, Jennings, Jerebko, Villanueva, and... Siva.

I think Kyle Singler has been a big part of our success. Just looking at +/- doesn't tell the story. Certainly it doesn't reflect the quality of the opposition, nor the quality of his teammates on court with him. It doesn't reflect time and score. If Singler is -5 in one part of the game, that doesn't prove that anyone else would have been + in the same minutes. They might have been even more negative.

Singler is not a great player, but by focusing on him, while ignoring the dodgy play of Smith and others game to game, seems to me to miss the larger point.